[There was a video here]

Here's a trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the flashy new prequel to Planet of the Apes. Apes. It's about apes. Did you get that? Yeah, and James Franco is the scientist who makes all the apes smart and take over the world.

Here's the thing I don't quite get about these kinds of prequels. We already know what happens in the end, and we already know it's bleak. So why bother? It's like the Star Wars prequels. Where are the stakes when we already know that Pretty Princess over there is going to turn into Darth Vader? Did we really care about Caprica when we already knew what those wacky Cylons would eventually be up to?

I guess it's sort of interesting to see how the damn dirty apes came to rule our planet (oh, yeah, sorry, it's Earth the whole time, guys) and stuff, plus Freida Pinto's pretty, but it still kinda feels like a big ol' who cares. The world as we know it ends, many people die at the hands of apes and the rest flee into the woods and become feral, end of story. Ha. I guess that's sort of interesting actually! Hopefully they'll at least solve the most burning question: If the apes were first made smart in San Francisco, why do they eventually have British accents? Important science query right there.